EXECUTIVE SUMMARY __________________________________________________________________________ country’s economy is left open to the external forces of globalisation, the configuration in WAEMU and the future of the Nigerian economy, there would (in the long term) be a risky process of satellisation and informalisation of Benin’s economy. 3.33 The CRM was pleased to note that the country had defined policies in economic sectors, such as agriculture, industry, transport and energy. However, these policies need to be coherent and coordinated so as to realise the Alafia Bénin 2025 vision. They need to address the challenges and focus, and ensure that the development poles are accompanied by a spatial distribution of economic functions. In this manner, complementary linkages could be created which would construct an integrated and reconfigured economic environment that would contribute to poverty reduction. Efficient economic governance requires a state machinery with institutional capacity adapted for building the emerging Benin and the effective coordination of economic policies – all of which are difficulties still encountered on the ground. 3.34 At the end of its analysis, the CRM makes recommendations on pursuing the cleaning up of the macroeconomic framework to meet the objectives of poverty reduction, on translating the vision into appropriate sectoral strategies consistent with the policy of growth poles and constructive integration of the informal sector, and on the emerging focus and challenges in the construction of the Alafia Bénin 2025 vision. 3.35 Promotion of sound public finance management. The CRM noted the efforts made by the government in key areas, like reforms towards resultsbased management. These include budgetary and accounting management, internal and external auditing, and the public procurement system. However, the management of public expenditure still encounters constraints in these three areas. An action plan for the results-based budget management strategic framework was adopted in December 2005, and its implementation should be reinforced. In order for budgetary reform to achieve sustainable success and to have a positive impact on the efficiency of public expenditure and the ensuing results, it needs to form part of an administrative reform and an appropriate reform of the public service. In this respect, the reforms carried out by the government still suffer from a number of weaknesses relating to the pace and time frame of effective transfer of areas of competence, the modalities for assigning competent human resources, and the overall council budget financing policy. 3.36 Concerning the improvement of budget implementation, the extension of the Public Finance Information Management System (SIGFIP) to all the ministries helped to reduce the payment period to less than 25 days in 2004 and to improve project implementation. However, the system suffers from poor auditing of public expenditure. Audit institutions encounter many constraints in the performance of their duties, particularly in the internal and external audit, as well as in the public procurement system. Lastly, the scourge of corruption also affects the sound management of public finance. 14